Uneducated oafish bumptious billionaire. Convicted felon. Dangerous man. Dangerous days. Plagiarizing Napoleon? L'etat c'est moi! Government secrecy increasing. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, "Secrecy is for losers. For people who don't appreciate the value of the information." See his book, "SECRECY: the American experience. (1997). From The New York Times:
Trump Suggests No Laws Are Broken if He’s ‘Saving His Country’
President Trump shared a quotation on social media, making it clear it was one he wanted people to absorb: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
President Trump on Saturday posted on social media a single sentence that appears to encapsulate his attitude as he tests the nation’s legal and constitutional boundaries in the process of upending the federal government and punishing his perceived enemies.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Mr. Trump wrote, first on his social media platform Truth Social, and then on the website X.
By late afternoon, Mr. Trump had pinned the statement to the top of his Truth Social feed, making it clear it was not a passing thought but one he wanted people to absorb. The official White House account on X posted his message in the evening.
The quote is a variation of one sometimes attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, although its origin is unclear.
Nonetheless, the sentiment was familiar: Mr. Trump, through his words and actions, has repeatedly suggested that surviving two assassination attempts is evidence that he has divine backing to enforce his will.
He has brought a far more aggressive attitude toward his use of power to the White House in his second term than he did at the start of his first. The powers of the presidency that he returned to were bolstered by last year’s Supreme Court ruling that he is presumptively immune from prosecution for any crimes he may commit using his official powers.
During his first weeks in office, Mr. Trump has signed numerous executive orders that pushed at the generally understood limits of presidential power, fired numerous officials and dismantled an agency in clear violation of statutory limits, and frozen spending authorized by Congress without clear authority. Many of his policy moves have been at least temporarily frozen by judges.
Such moves include trying to unilaterally rewrite the definition of birthright citizenship — a right enshrined in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment — to exclude babies born to undocumented mothers, and mass firings of public servants, ignoring civil service protection laws. He has all but shuttered the agency responsible for foreign aid, dismissed prosecutors who investigated him, and fired Senate-confirmed watchdogs without giving proper notice to Congress or justification.
Mr. Trump’s team has embraced an expansive version of the so-called unitary executive theory, a legal ideology that says that the Constitution should be understood as forbidding Congress from placing any limits on the president’s control of the executive branch, including by creating independent agencies or restricting the president’s ability to summarily fire any government official at will.
The Trump administration at first did not offer a public legal rationale for blowing through the statutes that provide various kinds of job protections to the officials that Mr. Trump has summarily fired, including members of independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board.
But last week, the administration offered something of an explanation. Sarah M. Harris, the acting solicitor general at the Justice Department, sent a letter to Congress saying the department would not defend the constitutionality of statutes that limit firing members of independent agencies before their terms were up. Such laws say the president cannot remove such an official at will, but only for a specific cause like misconduct.
While not using the phrase “unitary executive theory,” Ms. Harris’s letter echoed its ideological tenet that the Constitution does not allow Congress to enact a law “which prevents the president from adequately supervising principal officers in the executive branch who execute the laws on the president’s behalf,” and said the Trump administration will try to get the Supreme Court to overturn a 1935 precedent to the contrary.
That, at least, is a theory under which at least some of what Mr. Trump has been doing is lawful: It is not illegal to disregard an unconstitutional statute.
But, taken at face value, Mr. Trump’s statement on Saturday went much further, suggesting that even if what he is doing unambiguously breaks an otherwise valid law, that would not matter if he says his motive is to save the country.
There are a handful of instances of other presidents claiming the power to override legal limits, but those have usually been limited to national security.
In the early days of the Civil War, for example, Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus rights, called up troops and otherwise spent money that Congress, which was not in session, had not appropriated.
When Congress reconvened, Lincoln sent them a letter telling them what he had done and famously asking, “are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated?” He also said that what he had done, “whether strictly legal or not,” had been necessary, and Congress retroactively ratified his actions.
More than a century later, after President Richard Nixon resigned to avoid being impeached in the Watergate scandal, he talked in an interview about wiretapping and other steps that might appear to be illegal but were undertaken to protect against foreign threats. Citing Lincoln’s example, Nixon said presidents have inherent power to authorize government officials to break laws if the president decides that doing so is in the national interest.
“When the president does it, that means it’s not illegal,” Nixon claimed.
And following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney took actions that violated statutory limits on issues like torture and surveillance based on an expansive and disputed vision of the power their lawyers said the Constitution gives the president in his role as commander in chief.
While national security cases rarely get litigated, when they have, the Supreme Court has been skeptical of sweeping theories of presidential power — striking down President Harry S. Truman’s attempted seizure of steel mills as a Korean War measure, for example.
In any case, Mr. Trump’s moves so far have largely not been in the realm of national security. Rather, he has been attempting to stamp out pockets of independence that Congress created within the executive branch in order to centralize greater power in the White House over issues that are largely ones of domestic policy.
Mr. Trump and some of his allies have pushed the political argument that the nation has been under siege from what they characterize as leftist policies and values, and has fallen into a spiral of decline that must be reversed by any means necessary.
Among them, Mr. Trump’s budget chief, Russell Vought, wrote an essay in 2022, declaring that the United States was already in a “post-Constitutional moment” and that to push back against liberals, it was necessary to be “radical in discarding or rethinking the legal paradigms that have confined our ability to return to the original Constitution.”
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent, reporting on the second, nonconsecutive term of Donald J. Trump. More about Maggie Haberman
Charlie Savage writes about national security and legal policy. More about Charlie Savage
Jonathan Swan is a White House reporter covering the administration of Donald J. Trump.More about Jonathan Swan
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11 comments:
The dereliction of duty in our democracy by the federal courts over many decades is why we have some of the problems that we do in these executive branch agencies. They are becoming a political structure that's not functional or respectable.
Errors and no facts? Slogans and shibboleths? Sounds like faux Fox News noise to me. Our federal courts are a source of pride. What specifics can you offer us?
Source of pride that allows the executive branch to run roughshod over people maybe a source of pride to you.. but to those who think critically it's a disgrace. You must have voted for Trump. The federal courts love him and his rogue executive too apparently.
Wrong. Our Seventh Amendment right to jury trial is the envy of the world, and Justice Rehquist said it was a "bulwark against oppression." What do you know about federal courts, civil rights, and civil liberties? You express opinions but no facts. None. I was proud of federal courts when they desegregated our country and affirmed the right to Gay marriage. Your non sequiturs know no bounds.
St. Johns County is not a meritocracy. Corey Duke Mara, a former candidate for Mosquito Control, was a county employee. His file shows his cover letter informed the County that he was a Republican and a Roman Catholic. Not a BFOQ. And it's not a BFOQ for ALAIMO to say publicly that KOMANO is his "friend," the only reason given for the hiring. County government employees should be hired on the basis of merit. What a concept.
USA 6 million people on some kind of supervision or behind bars, immunity held up by the federal courts resulting in abuses, Patriot Act led to privacy rights ("4th Amendment") violations here and abroad, Europe has better privacy and human rights record than the USA since the fall of Hilter. Trump should have been disqualified from office for inciting a deadly riot at the Capitol. Courts and Congress derelict in their duties in our democracy!!!
He said he was his friend... but YOU say that was the only reason for him being hired. The guy is obviously qualified and isn't dependent on that job to eat so... proof and evidence is "because I say so" which isn't. Did he buy the position? Gonna need proof and evidence for that too. My guess is that we will be waiting for eternity if we depend on you for it
Flummery, dupery and nincompoopery in defensive of then indefensible. ONLY reason ALAIMO gave was that it was his "friend." No Commissioner spoke out in favor of open process. Developers like former Senator TRAVIS JAMES HUTSON have undue influence in our County. They want to keep it. They wanted RICHARD CHRISTIAN KOMANDO. What's your interest?
You can assert everything you just did accept the fact that he just got the job because he was someone's friend. That's your biased perception, but because he's qualified, that's biggest reason why he got the job. The friend thing isn't as significant as that. They can't just take some alcoholic off the streets and put him in there just because he's someone's friend can they? Were they supposed to choose someone who is nobody's friend?
No evidence of qualifications was ever presented to our St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners. No resume. No c.v, No law school or college transcripts. Has there ever been a performance evaluation during the year in which political patronage hire and ROY ALAIMO, JR' "friend" KOMANDO has encumbered a $200,000/year position, without an application, without a background investigation, without an ad, without other candidates being considered, excluding two (2) senior assistant County Attorneys (who have left our County's employment in apparent protest of unfair discrimination in favor of ALAIMO's "Friend."? Stinky, even by SJC's non-existent standards.
He's not qualified just because he hasn't handed Ed Slavin a college transcript? How about he demonstrates his qualifications every time he does his job. He's obviously qualified if there have been no issues with his performance. It's pretty simple. Tell us what he's done that signals that he's not qualified other than you don't have a college transcript.
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